“Useless Garbage”

"Useless Garbage" is an art project that I have been working on for a while now. It started as a tongue in cheek joke meant to mock hipster black and white photography, but very quickly became something much larger and meaningful.

I spent some time in a mental health facility, during my stay there I befriended a small group of strangers. We all bonded over the hatred for one particular nurse, who had mistreated us all in different ways. We would often all go out together on smoke breaks, as it was the only time we could get some freedom and could do what we wanted, stretch our legs and talk shit, and occasionally smoke whatever substance we had. During these smoke breaks, we were told to stay in the back parking lot, where we would sit on a curb and hang out for the allotted 15 minutes. So often we would find something to talk about, just to kill the time, none of us wanting to talk about the reasons that brought us there.

One topic that came up more than a few times was "The shoe." It was an abandoned shoe that was missing its laces, that had found a home in the middle of the parking lot. The shoe stayed there for my entire stay and during that time the friend group and I took turns trying to come up with crazy reasons about its origins. We would try to find answers to the meaningles questions of "how did it get there?", "Why was it only one shoe?", "Why are its laces missing?" and "Is someone walking around out there with only one shoe?" This brought all of us some well needed laughter. None of us really took the shoe or the questions we asked about it seriously, it was just a means of distraction from the problems that had brought us the facility. Each day we would go out on our smoke breaks and we would still find the shoe in the parking lot, but it sometimes changed locations.

On my last evening there, our conversation turned away from the shoe, but towards the mistreatment of the staff towards us, and how we often feel like the so called "motivational" posters around the facility felt almost like a joke. We spoke about how we all felt cast away by society and forgotten about, and the ones that were supposed to care for us often didn't, or couldn't be bothered to learn our real problems, just wanting to slap a quick band-aid onto our problems and cast us out back into the world. One of us, I cannot remember who, brought up a similarity between us and that shoe; lost and forgotten, deemed worthless by society, but with a little help it could be useful again.

Our last smoke break together quickly came to a close, one of the group members was leaving in the next few hours and needed to pack. I had to go on a smoke break alone for medical reasons, and while on it, I decided to take an ironic picture of the shoe, for memories. The experience was quite a lot of fun, and I did my best to make it artsy and fancy, while still being very tongue in cheek. When my break was done, I returned to the puzzle table where my friend group usually stayed, and showed them the picture. Well, this was exactly what we all needed, as it turned another sad evening into one full of laughter and jokes. One of us compared the photo of the shoe to the motivational posters around the mental health facility. Another one of us suggested making the picture into one, with some tongue in cheek caption. I regret to say I was not the person who came up with the caption, however I was the one who made it into the poster. "It gets better." had us all dying of laughter, talking about trying to convince the nurses to print the photograph and hang it up, but without telling them the true meaning behind the photograph.

Since then I have taken many more photos of lost shoes, and decided on a few rules for the photos. The biggest one being that I cannot move the shoe, I must capture it as it lay where I found it. At most, if it's hanging, I would steady it for the photograph.

The photos of these shoes have become a symbol of the struggles of mental health for me. As many of the shoes I find aren't damaged in any significant way, more often than not, all that's wrong with them is they are missing their mate, or some laces.

The mistreatment my friend group and I suffered under that nameless nurse is not something I will forget, how they made me feel so broken and useless. How the nurses didn't really care enough about me to really listen to what was bothering me, they just decided for me what was wrong and refused to listen. It made me feel small, worthless, unseen, forgotten.

Many individuals I spoke with in the mental health facility had been in and out of various ones for years, never having a proper home, never being treated properly or looked after. Tossed away by society, much like the shoes that we bonded over.

So what started as a tongue in cheek joke mocking the mental health care system, soon became a depressingly accurate metaphor as well.

How many people end up on the street because of their mental health issues? How many would benefit from a little care and maybe some proper diagnosis and medication? Why does society look down upon the homeless and mentally ill the exact same as an abandoned shoe? Calling them both "dirty" "unclean" "untouchable" "garbage" filth" and other names I do not wish to repeat.

Why does society toss away the mentally ill?

Why does society toss away otherwise perfect shoes?

I seek to try to find beauty in these lost shoes to help bring awareness to how society likes to forget about the mentally ill, and how it directly connects to the homeless epidemic plaguing a majority of the world.